Brian Cloughley

Saturday November 25, 2017

The New York Timesreported on October 22 that the United States has “just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories,” which is a staggering total. But in an intriguing revelation the Times reported that there are a further 37,813 troops deployed “on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as ‘unknown.’ The Pentagon provided no further explanation.”

It is not surprising that Washington’s war-spreaders do not supply information to the American public concerning the location of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen involved in clandestine operations around the globe, because this might bring to light the lack of justification for such deployments. Concurrent with denial of information, however, is an energetic campaign aimed at convincing Americans that everything to do with military strength is laudable and that those who voice the slightest criticism of the armed forces are unpatriotic or even traitorous.

The American public, including the many who maintain a sane and even-handed approach to military expansion, are in general (if one may use that word in this context) much in favour of the military. For example, they love seeing and hearing marching musicians at public functions, but it is not the love of music that has motivated the Pentagon’s conductors to allocate over 400 million dollars a year on 130 military bands.

Don’t get me wrong: as a former soldier I am much in favour of these bands. There are few things more rousing and toe-tapping than a drumming, thumping, immaculately dressed, triple ranked, step-perfect batch of hooters and tooters. They’re marvellous. And they’re one of the best psychological operations weapons that the Pentagon has got to convince the citizens of America that their military is perfect.read on...

Saturday November 4, 2017

US and NATO representatives keep trying to convince the world that Afghanistan is not a corruption-ridden quagmire of violence, and US Defence Secretary, General Mattis, told reporters in Kabul on September 28 that “uncertainty has been replaced by certainty” because of new US policy, and that “the sooner the Taliban recognizes they cannot win with bombs, the sooner the killing will end.”read on...

Monday October 23, 2017

On October 4 in Niger in central Africa four American special forces soldiers were killed in an ambush by “fifty fighters, thought to be associated with ISIS [Islamic State], a US official said.” In the course of the attack, one US soldier was left behind when the others withdrew, and was subsequently found dead. Nigerien soldiers were also killed, and it is interesting to examine how US media outlets recorded this aspect of what was obviously a disaster for US Africa Command, AFRICOM, the organisation headquartered, bizarrely, in Germany, that has 46 military bases (that we know of) in that continent. (Niger, incidentally, is twice the size of Texas.)

ABC News reported that “a soldier from Niger also died from the attack” while CBS thought that “four Nigerien soldiers died,” and Stars and Stripes went with “several.” CNN’s tally was five but the New York Times didn't mention Nigerien soldiers at all. Fox News, surprisingly, said that four were killed, as did the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which even expanded to record that there had been eight Nigerien soldiers wounded.

It isn’t to be expected that the US media would ever concern themselves with deep research into how many foreign soldiers are killed in any of the countries in which the US is involved in armed conflict, but the sloppy reporting is a good indicator of the shrug factor.

And the western media continues to shrug about the deep involvement of the US military and the CIA in countries throughout Africa.read on...

Saturday September 2, 2017

General John F Campbell, commander of all foreign forces in Afghanistan 2014-2016, said in a speech in Kabul on December 28, 2014 that "The insurgents are losing, they’re desperate." But they weren’t and they aren’t.

On August 21 President Trump outlined his plan for continuation of the 16-year US-NATO war in Afghanistan, in which there is supposedly a new strategy. Strangely, his speech included the announcement that "Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win," which tends to beg the question — don’t armies always fight to win? If not, we might wonder what all the US-NATO-"Coalition" soldiers died for, over these blood-soaked years in which United States taxpayers have had to pay over a trillion dollars for the cost of fighting an unwinnable war.

The other foreign countries involved in the war have not had to pay anything like that amount. The cost to Britain, for example, before it reduced its forces to a small training team in 2015, was 27 billion pounds — 35 billion dollars. And only 453 soldiers killed. Peanuts, so far as the politicians are concerned. And there are very few people in the UK who know or care about Britain’s disastrous Fourth Afghan War.read on...

Friday July 28, 2017

In Afghanistan on 24 July, a Taliban suicide bomber killed forty people in the centre of Kabul, just four days after a US airstrike killed 16 Afghan policemen in Helmand Province. Both incidents of slaughter were terrible and highlighted the US State Department official warning that “Travel to all areas of Afghanistan remains unsafe due to the ongoing risk of kidnapping, hostage taking, military combat operations, landmines, banditry, armed rivalry between political and tribal groups, militant attacks, direct and indirect fire, suicide bombings, and insurgent attacks, including attacks using vehicle-borne or other improvised explosive devices. Attacks may also target official Afghan and US government convoys and compounds, foreign embassies, military installations, commercial entities, non-governmental organization offices, restaurants, hotels, airports, and educational centres.” Is there anything left that isn’t under threat of destruction?

This is official recognition by Washington that Afghanistan is a catastrophe. It could not be made plainer that the place is a hellhole of unlimited shattering violence. It is also terminally corrupt, and if the grief-stricken families of the dead policemen ever receive the compensation or pension due to them it will be a miracle. Out of 176 countries, Transparency International places it at 169 in its corruption index.

Two days after the US-NATO slaughter of Afghan policemen it was announced that Médecins sans Frontières, or Doctors without Borders — known as MSF — had “reopened a small medical clinic in the Afghan city of Kunduz — its first facility there since US air strikes destroyed a hospital it ran in 2015.”

MSF is a saintly organisation whose doctors, nurses and support staff “provide assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters and to victims of armed conflict.” They do so “irrespective of race, religion, creed or political convictions," but on 22 October 2015 the MSF hospital in Kunduz was destroyed by a series of US airstrikes.read on...

Saturday April 4, 2015

The German city of Frankfurt is continental Europe’s largest financial center and host to the country’s Stock Exchange, countless other financial institutions, and the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) which is responsible for administering the monetary policy of the 18-nation Eurozone. The place is awash with money, as demonstrated by the plush new ECB office building which is costing a fortune.

The original price of the bank’s enormous palace was supposed to be 500 million euros, about 550 million dollars, but the bill has now been admitted as €1.3 billion (£930 m; $1.4 bn). This absurdly over-expensive fiasco was directed by the people who are supposed to steer the financial courses of 18 nations and their half billion unfortunate citizens. If the ECB displays similar skill sets in looking after Europe’s money as it has in controlling the cost of constructing its huge twin-tower headquarters, then Europe is in for a rocky time.

Intriguingly, the Bank isn’t alone in contributing to Europe’s bureaucratic building boom. There is another Europe-based organization of equal ambition, pomposity and incompetence which is building a majestically expensive and luxurious headquarters with a mammoth cost overrun about which it is keeping very quiet indeed.read on...